Tag Archives: Whitsun

I am doing research for a book I am writing whose working title is Technology’s Role in Human Evolution. Currently, I am focused on light and electricity and their relationship to levity-gravity and, in alchemy, to salt-sulfur polarities. In doing this research I ordered and began to read Nick Thomas’ book The Science Between Space and Counterspace. Now I have another polarity to penetrate. All this research is slowing my book writing progress and brings up a difficult question about how or if to include any of these concepts that most potential readers will not understand or find too far removed from their sense of reality.

I take part in a weekly online discussion group that is part of a Theological University in America. I am a welcomed outsider. This coming week I will lead a discussion on Easter. The students and professors at this university tend towards Eastern spiritual paths. I plan to offer a perspective of the Western Spiritual Path as part of the Easter experience. Here is a draft outline of what I plan to cover:

Easter is the Main Christian festival – Pentecost (aka Whitsun) has to be considered part of the greater Easter festival

St. Paul said “Had He not risen, then our faith is in vain”

Christianity was NOT about Christ’s teachings but about His deeds – many before him had offered similar teachings so that historians find little new and others can say “our tradition, our teachings are better.”

Christmas was not about the birth of Jesus; rather it was about the coming of Christ into a human body. This happened not at the birth of Jesus but at the Baptism. What occurred before in the birth stories of Matthew and Luke as well as at the Temple at age 12 are part of the preparation for Christ-mas. This is why both Mark and John begin with the baptism as this is the beginning of story of Christ on Earth as a human being.

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, on the back of an ass, announces that this God had fully entered the body, its vehicle. What remained was to go through what the Gods and the beings of the hierarchies had not experienced – death – so that the battle with death could be won.

Earlier, at the Transfiguration, Christ had attained to the level that previous great sages had attained at their death. From this point on, Christ’s cosmic hour has come and the great deed on Golgotha is prepared.

The ancient mysteries expected the Sun God to come. They knew that their own trainings and initiations were weakening, not achieving the same heights of consciousness. These ancient mysteries had a Janus face, able to look back in time and ahead but the visions were clouding over. In these initiations, the neophyte was put into a state where to others he or she appeared dead because his or her life body (etheric, prana, chi) was freed from the physical body by the hierophant. This occurs normally only at death. Christ was the hierophant for Lazarus – read this story and you will see the parallels to the process of initiation in the ancient mysteries only here this is done in public rather than inside the Holy of the Holies. Thus the high priest had to condemn this hierophant to death to save the nation from losing its connection to its Folk Spirit (Yahweh).

On Golgotha, the transition from moon to sun occurs for earth. Our planet becomes the seed for a future universe as the blood and spirit of Christ, the sun god, enters the earth. Enacted in public, for the world to see, was the Turning Point in Time, the Mystery of Golgotha enacted by the Heavenly Hierophant, Christ.

Christ is called the new or the second Adam. Through him, an individual person can now overcome death. This is what is meant when the Rosicrucians said “In Christos Morimor” – in Christ I die. For the death of the lower ego allows for one to find their higher ego – their Christ in me (St. Paul “No longer I, but Christ in me”).

What Christ achieved as one human being applies to all human beings. Each of us can now go this path that St. Paul describes.

As this Holy Spirit descended at the Baptism to Jesus and remained upon him – as witnessed by John the Baptist, so did the Holy Spirit descend upon the disciples at Pentecost. The descent to one man, Jesus, was in the form of a dove while to the many disciples it was as flaming tongues. What descended onto Jesus was pure, serene, able to fly and move like a spirit. What descended upon the disciples was now human – a tongue for speaking into the hearts of others but no longer was this speaking merely dispassionate knowledge, it now was full of enthusiasm for life, for Earth, for the future. The world itself was to be renewed through Love.

Before Golgotha, the primary battle was against the temptation of Lucifer through whom mankind was gifted Knowledge. On Golgotha there were three crosses. No picture of Golgotha is fully accurate without the three crosses representing Lucifer on one side, Christ in the middle, and one who brings the battle of our times that the ancient Persians called Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness on the third cross. A discussion breaks out between the three. Lucifer recognizes the Christ and he/she is forgiven. But the one of our times, mocks the Christ.

While the Battle with Death has been won (the war continues), the Battle with Evil is now raging. This battle will continue for a long time, well after our human appearance has severely changed, well after women will have become infertile. Evil will not be defeated in any accustomed way. Through gentleness, through an ever stronger love for thy neighbor, through feeling the pain of others as one’s own pain, will Evil elect to leave this world – “and the meek shall inherit this world.”

Is technology evil? Is it something we should fear and keep away? No! Evil is a spiritual “thing”. The ideas and concepts embedded into and enabling our technology can be carriers of evil. But as we rise in consciousness in balance with our sinking into the depths of electricity and other forces employed in technology, so shall we remain in our humanity. Christ reversed things: no longer is royalty or priesthood carried in the blood. No longer will the ancient mysteries work. Now new mysteries must arise through the working together of humans and spiritual beings who are now descending to help develop this seed of the future, the earth, the cosmic earth.

Whitsun is a shortened version of Whit Sunday which may derive from White Sunday or from Whit as in wit, wisdom, or both. This name is used in countries with Anglican religious heritage or connections. Whitsun is the seventh Sunday after Easter. It is another name for Pentecost which is the fiftieth day after Passover (the Saturday before Easter, or at least it was supposed to be but differences between the Gregorian, the Julian, and the Hebrew calendars cause Western Easter, Eastern Easter, and Passover to often unalign.) Another way to describe this is that Ascension Thursday happens 40 days after Easter and Whitsun/Pentecost ten days later. While Christmas is a fixed holiday, Whitsun/Pentecost is “movable” as it falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon that follows the spring equinox. The early Christians tried to establish Easter as a cosmic event with Christmas as an earthly event. Pentecost is the Greek name for Shavuot, a prominent feast of ancient Israel that celebrated Moses receiving the Law on Sinai. Perhaps the name Whitsun, or Whitsunday, was an attempt to distance or distinguish this Christian festival from the Jewish one.

Whitsun and Ascension go together. The time from Easter to Ascension is a time of intense teaching from Christ to the disciples. All present were initiated into the deep Mysteries of Golgotha. Then comes the proving of the training – ten days alone (or becoming all-one).

The festival of Whitsun commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples. This is described in Acts 2:1-4, “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all together in one self [place is often used]. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong rushing wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”

Normally our mental image is tongues of fire on the 12 disciples but note this 6th century Rabbula Gospels from Syria (now in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy). It shows Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, in the middle. Thus present, in one self, were more than just the 12. Some traditions claim as many as 120 were present as one.

To understand Whitsun/Pentecost, we need to understand what is here called the Holy Spirit. There are two mentions in the bible of descents of the holy spirit. The first is [John 1:32-34] at the baptism of Jesus, “Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit descend down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’” The second ‘descent’ is Acts 2:1-4 as quoted above. I bolded the words “and remain” to emphasize that this spirit was not in Jesus of Nazareth until this moment of baptism. Theologians often miss this important point.

‘Spirit’ is mentioned in other passages, notably John 19:30, “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit [pneuma, πνεῦμα].” Pneuma is the same word for wind in Greek, not the moving air but what moves the air. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon states that pneuma also means “breath as in the nostrils or mouth, often in Greek writings from Aeschylus down.” Now read Genesis 2:7 (ASV) “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a livingsoul.” And in John 1:4 “In Him is life [zoe, ζωὴ] and that life is the light of mankind.” “Him” is the Word, the Logos. When a human being speaks a word, they must use their breath. Breath is of the airy element in which light can freely exist. Note the strong association of the Word with life, zoe. Much more could be said on this tangent.

How are these two descents of the Holy Spirit alike and how are they different?

Let’s start with the day of the Ascension. Gazing upwards, the disciples of Christ Jesus see Christ vanishing in the clouds. The usual conception of this scene is that Christ went up into heaven and so departed from the earth leaving not only the disciples to their own resources but the rest of mankind as well. This feels like a spiritual reneging on the promise of Easter! Did not Christ, through His deed on Golgotha, resolve to unite His own Being with the earth, that is to say, from the Mystery of Golgotha onwards to remain forever connected with earth-evolution?

Next, ten days after this Ascension, tongues of fire descend upon the heads of all of those assembled as “one self” so that they are inspired “to speak with other tongues.” What this actually means is that from this moment forward those gathered were able to impart the secrets learned from their time with the resurrected Christ, of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the heart of every human being, irrespective of race, gender, religion, or ethnicity. This was a cosmic deed accomplished for the whole of humanity.

Christ fulfilled his deed for all mankind on Golgotha. But now mankind must come to grasp this deed. The permeation of the human spirit-and-soul with the power to understand the Mystery of Golgotha is the sending of the Holy Spirit. This is the picture of the Whitsun festival, the festival of Pentecost.

Christ sent the Spirit after ten days of working on their own so that the individual being of spirit-and-soul may have access to the effects of The Deed that was accomplished for all men in common. Through the Spirit man must learn to experience the Christ Mystery inwardly, in spirit and in soul. The Holy Spirit is available to each human individual in order that he or she may be able to understand this cosmic Deed.

Looking a bit deeper (there are always more depths!), we can come to see that the Ascension tells us: The Deed on Golgotha was fulfilled for the physical body and the etheric body in the universal human sense while Whitsun tells us: The single human being must make this Deed bear fruit in himself by receiving the Holy Spirit. Thereby the universal Christ Impulse becomes individual in each human being.